


These are not the stories I meant to write.

by waldorph



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 9,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am taking prompts over at my tumblr and collecting them here. I am pretty hardcore ot3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Viking Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lagertha as earl-ess. Could be AU or what happens in the future -- basically I want her queen of all the things. - leupagus

She let him go West. With his ambitions and ability to inspire even the most craven man he was not someone to be trifled with. He had his own ship, and if the venture went nowhere, she had nothing to lose. But if he came back. If he came back with treasures from another land, though, he would remember to whom he owed his ventures, and her coffers would overflow.

He came back.

He came back with riches and slaves, and when her eyes fell on the priest, Ragnar's hand tightened on the rope around his neck. 

"You speak our language, Priest," she says, and the man startles and glances at Ragnar quickly before saying,

"Yes. I--I have travelled." 

"You have been to our lands." The Westerners had travelled to Viking lands, but she the was the first news she'd had of it. They were isolated here, but not that isolated. She had entertained a wandering bard not three months ago. 

Again, another glance from the priest to Ragnar. Behind them, Rollo Lothbrok rolled his eyes. Someday the elder Lothbrok would die, the only uncertainty was whether by his brother's hand, or his own stupidity. 

"I--to spread the word of God," the priest said, his accent thick and strange around their words.

"Ragnar Lothbrok," she said, lifting her chin and transferring her gaze to Ragnar, who smirked at her. She smirked back. "You and your men must be rewarded for your fearlessness. The Gods were truly with you. Your spoils were great, and as such, my spoils are great, for what you do, you do on my behalf."

She watched his jaw work and thought, _Yes. Yes, I have you._

"But," she continued, "I am a fair leader, and all I shall take of your spoils is the slave who speaks our tongue, and the book he clings to." 

Ragnar's shoulders tightened, his chin jutting out, and the room went a bit quieter. They were all trained warriors, her people, and they knew the scent of violence. She lifted her eyebrow and held out her hand for the tether. Long, long moments pass and then Ragnar crossed the space to her throne, and took a knee as he placed the rope into her hand. She smiled, leaning forward so she could murmur in his ear. "You will join me for dinner. I will hear of these new lands you've found." 

"As my lady wishes," he gritted out, and she smiled. She missed him when he was gone. Things were never as fun.


	2. Nothing Will Keep Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lagertha has to go off and be a badass solo for some reason, and all she wants to do is come home to her children and her boys. - anon

They have been fighting for five days. Five long days. She was supposed to be gone a day, she went hunting. 

Ragnar likes to think he can provide for the family, but he is good for chopping wood and that is where his skills end. He is a farmer, not a hunter, and so she goes out to find them something more substantial than fish. The Priest took ill not long after Gyda, and was the worse of the two for it. Gyda is a strong girl, she will be a strong woman, blessed by the Gods, but. The priest's god has long-abandoned him, even if he cannot yet see it. He believes it all to be a test, but she wonders.

She is a shield maiden. She can fight alongside her husband--she can beat him, but it has been a long time since she went to battle, and she's tired. Her body is screaming, and the battle haze has faded. The crows circle above, a sure sign Odin is watching, and waiting.  
It's a small town. The men are out on raid, and the Earl across the mountain wants to move into Haraldson's lands. Lagertha is fighting with women and children, only a few of whom know how to fight with any skill. It's vital they win, that they repulse these invaders. Send a clear, strong message once, and you need never repeat it.

Survival is a grand teacher, though, and they've held their own, but they won't much longer. 

She screams and falls back into the battle, pushing to the front. She is going to get home. She has a husband, and children and--a priest. She is going. Home. 

When the bloodlust fades, she realizes she's covered in tacky, quickly-drying blood. It's between her fingers and under her clothes and in her hair, and she looks around to take stock. 

"We won?" one of the young girls asks. She's only Gyda's age. 

"They will sing of this victory," Lagertha tells her, cupping her cheek and grinning, and the girl grins back, her eyes fever-bright. She will be an excellent shield-maiden, now that she knows such a thing is possible. She stays the night, bathes and eats and helps to bury the dead (so many children, so many mothers with blank eyes), and in the morning she makes her way home.

She finds a deer and takes its life, thanking Frigg for the boon, and when her home is in sight something deep in her chest feels knocked loose.

Ragnar runs out to her, kissing her hard and fierce and she bites at his lips, hungry for the taste of him.

"And where have you been?" Ragnar demands.

"I was fighting a war without you," she said. "And I won."

"Not a very good war, then," he says as he takes the deer from her shoulders. She smacks him upside the head, but then she's too busy holding her children close to her, smelling their hair and kissing their faces to fight with her idiot husband. It could have been her children lying dead because a man was greedy, and cowardly, and thought there was honor in attacking the defenseless. 

"Are you alright?" Athelstan asks her. His voice is still weak, and reedy, and his accent is thicker than it usually is. He's frailer than she'd remembered and she gives him a smile. 

"I'm fine, and tonight we have venison. It will help you get strong. Well. It will help you be stronger than you are now."

He smiles back at her, and makes room for her to sit beside him in her bed (Ragnar has moved the priest into their bed. Her husband is many things: subtle is not one of them). She leans against him tiredly, listening to Ragnar instructing the children on how to properly prepare a deer for eating, letting the sounds of home lull her to sleep, Athelstan's long fingers in her hair.


	3. Look, It's Not That Weird (it really is)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how about monern au, in which the kids explain to their new friends in school (lets say they just moved there) how they have two dads and one mom :D - anon

Gyda is pretty sure this place sucks. She liked her school, she liked her town, but apparently because Mom and Papa got jobs here and Dad can freelance from wherever, they had to move from Chicago to Boston. It’s ridiculous, but she’s making the best of it. 

Bjorn isn’t adapting that well, but that’s because he’s a loser. Well, he’s a jock, and super popular, but a loser. Mostly. Whatever, she’s on the Student Council and she’s a new kid. Someone has to have ambition. 

“So, what do you parents do?” Sarah asks while they wait for the late bus. Bjorn is playing Megarun on his iPhone, grunting at it, so Gyda answers.

“Well, my mom is a lawyer. That’s why we moved, really—she’s a partner at Thompson, Donley and Lothbrok—she’s Lothbrok. My dad is a professor of religious studies at Northwestern, and my other dad is currently unemployed, but back in Chicago he worked for the Mayor’s Office.” 

Doing what nobody is really clear on, but she can remember him coming home with split lips and black eyes sometimes.

Sarah is quiet for a long time. “You have…two dads?”

“Don’t be fucking homophobic. This is Massachusetts, didn’t you guys like, invent gay marriage?” Bjorn demands. 

Sarah makes a face at him like she can’t believe he knows how to walk and chew gum at the same time. 

“You have _two dads_ and a mom. You have three parents who…live together? Like—not like, your dads are together and your mom like—was the surrogate or like, married one of them and—”

“Oh, no,” Gyda interrupts. “They’re three. They’re together. Papa—the professor—he was a later addition, Bjorn was—how old were you?” she asks, because she can’t remember a time he wasn’t there, but she’s three years younger than Bjorn. 

“Five,” Bjorn said. “He was our nanny while he was finishing grad school.” 

Sarah stares at them, but when the bus comes she still sits next to Gyda, so they’ll probably still be friends.


	4. Language Barrier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> athelstan doesn't know some of the dirtier words in norse and ragnar teaches him. or else bjorn tricks him into using a filthy word for an innocuous object and then hijinks ensue. - anon

“Can I have your cock?” Athelstan asks one day.

Ragnar stares at him. No flush, no squirm—no hint of lust, even. He narrows his eyes. “My…cock?”

“Yes?” Athelstan says, blinking at him. “Why?”

So—it’s possible this is Bjorn’s fault. Athelstan watches the children well, but he would have to have bought their peace in some way, and allowing Bjorn to teach him more of their language would—this is definitely Bjorn’s fault. 

“Why don’t you show me what you mean,” Ragnar says gently. He would laugh, but they’ve all reached an easy truce, a rhythm that Lagertha would kill Ragnar for disrupting. “I don’t—that word isn’t the one you want.” 

Athelstan glances outside, which is all the confirmation Ragnar needs—Bjorn is downstream with his sister and mother, fishing. Undoubtedly the poor man is wondering what he’s been tricked into saying. Ragnar sighs and puts his hand on Athelstan’s shoulder. “Priest, you really shouldn’t—”

Words escaped him, then, because Athelstan’s hand is cupping his cock. 

“I was so sure it was the right word,” Athelstan says, eyes wide, tilting his face up. It’s possible Lagertha’s been right all along. It’s possible that the priest is not so retiring and naive as Ragnar believes, despite how he looks.

He’s meditating on this while Athelstan’s fingers find their way into his trousers, wrapping around his half-hard cock. “What other words do you know that you haven’t let on?” Ragnar asks, striving for casual. He’s failing. He’s failing atrociously.

“Fuck?” Athelstan offers.

“And you know what it means,” Ragnar says, throwing caution to the wind. This may be the greatest day.

“I’m a very fast learner, and you have nothing better to do this afternoon.”


	5. Confessional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ragnar and Lagertha go to confession for the lulz, with Athelstan hearing their confession. - anon

Athelstan is new to this parish, but it’s old, and devoted, and they’ve tried very hard to make him feel welcome. Father Shannon is old, but still very committed to the Church. 

It’s a small costal town, but now that summer is out and the college students are home, it’s become a busy place. 

He puts that out of his mind and takes his place in the confessional, ready to hear and absolve. 

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the penitent begins. A woman, not someone Athelstan has taken confession from yet, though that hardly narrows the field. “My last confession was… When was it?” 

Athelstan is about to remind her that he’s new, so he wouldn’t know that, when someone else says,

“Five months ago.” 

It’s a man’s voice, and Athelstan frowns, leaning forward slightly to peer through the grate. He sees two heads, both blond. 

“Confession is for the individual,” he tells them, uncertain. 

“No, it’s alright,” the woman tells him. “So, five months ago. I’ve been at school.”

Athelstan is fairly certain she could have gone to confession at school, but this is not the place for remonstrations like that. 

“Go on, my child,” he says. 

“We’ve been having impure thoughts,” she says. “There’s—well. Ragnar isn’t of the church. He’s a godless heathen, so I guess that’s probably a sin too.”

“Perhaps you should simply go through the Commandments, my child.” 

There’s whispered conferencing, and then she exhales. “Okay, sure. Well, I tell Ragnar he’s a god a lot and he does a lot of worshipping of me, so, there’s One straight out of the gate. The thing is, some guys can’t find the clit at all, and he never has that problem, and he’s got really thick fingers, you know? So it’s—”

“Is that all?” Athelstan interrupts desperately. They’re all warned about this in seminary school. It’s not—it’s not an official class, or anything, but it’s generally known that teenagers or even adults will want to sexualize and objectify the most holy parts of their religion. Athelstan’s just never been on the receiving end of such a calculated attack before. 

“No,” she says, and she sounds almost regretful. “Two, I say Fucking Christ all the time.”

“Three—we have games on Sundays,” the man volunteers. Athelstan tilts his head: he’s looking at his phone. Who has to Google the Ten Commandments?

“I mean, I don’t listen to my parents, but I love them,” the girl says. “Although I did come to Confessional and that was because of them, so maybe we’re good with Four.” 

“You do realize that it’s not—you’re not supposed to want to have done these,” Athelstan says. 

There’s a throaty laugh, and Athelstan exhales shakily. 

“Five I haven’t done,” she muses. “Six I did, though.”

“Rollo was an ass,” the guy mutters.

“Yeah, but he was your brother and we were technically still dating when you and I hooked up,” she replies, careless. “So, Father, Nine is out, too.”

“Seven?” Athelstan asks.

“Check,” she agrees. She almost sounds sorry, but there’s the sound of the guy laughing quietly, muffled like he’s got his hand over his face. Athelstan can’t even bring himself to look. 

“Eight?”

“I blamed the pot smell in the dorm on the kids next door.”

“Ten?”

“We don't really keep up with the Joneses, but I would like to have that boat Floki's got,” the guy says.

Athelstan sighs. “Are you at all penitent?” he asks. “Either of you?”

Another murmured conversation, but he doesn’t really need to wait. “You’ve wasted my time—time another person could have used to find spiritual well-being.”

“Let us take you out to dinner, then,” the guy says. “To apologize.”

Athelstan sighs and opens the door to the booth, waiting for them both to exit. The church is empty, thank God for small favors. “I don’t think that’s a good—” he starts, and then loses the train of thought. 

It’s not—they’re his age, probably. She has wild hair and her boyfriend has a mohawk that falls into a ponytail and they’re very beautiful. Both of them. 

“Come on, Father,” she says, taking his hand in hers and smiling up at him. Behind her, her boyfriend smirks. “Let us apologize.” 

“We promise,” the boyfriend says, “We’ll be very good to you.” 

This is a mistake. But Athelstan is definitely going to make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> h/t to saezutte for the note that apparently Catholics have a different 10 commandments and Google failed me a lot.


	6. No Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ragnar and Lagertha are models, and Athelstan is the lowly photographer's assistant who is in way over his head. - anon

It’s one of those really high fashion, artsy shoots. Since Thor came out, Norse gods are all the rage, so people are trying to bring back vikings as a thing. Well, kind of. This mostly seems to be shot in Norway and that’s as far as it’s going, but. Maybe they’ll do something in photoshop with it?

Athelstan actually isn’t supposed to be working this shoot. He’s supposed to be home, celebrating Easter with his family, not here in fucking Norway.

Lagertha (no last name, like Madonna and Cher, apparently) is in leather. A lot of really really strategic leather. 

Ragnar Lothbrok is wearing pretty much nothing. Haraldson likes to do that on his shoots—invert the whole naked-woman/clothed-man thing. 

So far, Lagertha has used her $3000 belt as a leash to pull Ragnar’s very, very willing face to her groin. They’re both—well, they’re models, so they’re beautiful, but they’re also—hot. 

Which, it’s weird, Athelstan knows, but beautiful doesn’t mean hot. Things that are beautiful should be appreciated, not—had sex with. He’s been working his way up the ladder of the fashion industry since he graduated high school, a lot of it through sheer stupid luck and a lot of it because he can work with models without getting an erection or hitting on them. Apparently that’s a prized and infinitely rare commodity. 

So it figures that on the biggest shoot of his career, one that could launch him into an individual career, he has sweaty palms and is half-erect in his pants. 

Blast. 

“Look at these,” Haraldson snaps at him, and hands Athelstan his iPad. Athelstan swipes through the rough shots and sees immediately what he means. There’s chemistry between Lagertha and Ragnar, no one is arguing that. But there’s a huge disconnect between what Athelstan’s seeing in person and what the camera is getting. 

“Yes,” Athelstan agrees. 

“It’s shit,” Haraldson rages. “Utter fucking shit! You two are supposed to—”

“Maybe it’s you,” Lagertha suggests, no pretense at sweetness in her voice. She lifts a pale eyebrow, eyes fierce behind the artfully-warlike makeup. 

Her hand is on Ragnar’s clavicle, and he’s still kneeling beside her, watching her with a small smile. Athelstan takes the shot. 

“I have photographed—” Haraldsan starts.

“The same shit over and over,” Lagertha agrees, and her hand is moving, drifting up Ragnar’s face and into his wrecked hair, pulling back to make him bare his neck, and Athelstan keeps taking the shot. The way Ragnar’s eyes flutter closed, eyelashes soft against his cheeks. The way she’s all hard angles and strong lines and he’s rounded, pliant and beautiful. They’re beautiful together. 

“What do you have?” Ragnar asks, and it takes a second for Athelstan to realize he’s talking to him.

“He’s my assistant,” Haraldson dismisses, but Ragnar is suddenly in Athelstan’s space, tall and strong and perfectly cut, perfectly—perfect. 

“Show me what you have,” he says, and Athelstan does, bringing the images up. Ragnar’s hand is hot on the back of Athelstan’s neck, crowding into him, and Athelstan can’t breathe.

“You do it,” he says, and Haraldson is gone, stormed into a trailer. “You do it.” 

“O—okay?” Athelstan agrees, glancing back at everyone—if this goes well then they’re not out a day of setting up and working with nothing to show for it. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Michael, the lead makeup artist, asks, shrugging a shoulder. “Go at it.”

So he does. He takes picture after picture of Lagertha in beautiful gowns and impossible couture. He takes pictures of her using Ragnar as a prop and he takes pictures of Ragnar worshipping her for it. 

The next day he gets to the location with Haraldson’s coffee only to find that Haraldson has apparently abandoned the shoot, and Ragnar is wearing beautiful, beautiful suits that fit him like a dream, and in the morning they just take shots of him. When they break for lunch they’ll just take shots of Lagertha and—Athelstan’s not sure what they’re going to do tomorrow, but the site is booked for three days. 

“He’s easy,” Lagertha observes. She’s in skinny jeans and a puffy down jacket. Her hat looks like something a Russian Tsar would have worn. 

“It’s—yes. He makes getting a good photo simple,” Athelstan agrees.

“Sure,” she says. “Let’s pretend that’s what I meant.”

He glances at her, and she’s smirking at him, but models—it’s nothing. It’s fine. She sits in his chair while he takes pictures of the way the trousers strain against Ragnar’s thighs, the way the jackets sit across his shoulders. 

“You should come to the hotel tonight,” she decides while he’s looking over the pictures he took. He thinks—they’re good, all of them. He thinks the client will be pleased with the subtle threat of violence that seems to hover over Ragnar in all of this morning’s pictures. He was good to work with, in a fine mood, but it’s there in his fingers and in his eyes. A promise of reckoning. 

“I have to—work,” he says, distracted.

“Hm?” Ragnar asks, grabbing his own jacket and putting it on, blowing on his fingers. It is freezing. March in Norway, this shoot should have been in July. 

“Athelstan is going to come over tonight!” Lagertha tells him, beaming at him and he kisses her cheek absently. 

“Oh is he?”

“Yes. He’s going to let us take pictures of him,” she agrees and Athelstan turns around to say that no, no that’s not happening. He doesn’t like his picture being taken—he’s pale and he’s skinny and his hair is too dark and he looks like some kind of vampire with a wasting disease. He’s not letting—he’s not going to their hotel room because he spent last night jerking off furiously, wondering if Lagertha rode Ragnar as hard as she’d made it seem like she did during that day’s shoot. Wondering if makeup would have to hide bruises on Ragnar’s neck. He doesn’t need to see the place where they—he’s trying really hard to maintain his professionalism. This is important. He can’t—he just can’t.

“I’m—” he starts, and Ragnar smiles and leans into him again.

“You’ll enjoy it,” he promises, breath hot against Athelstan’s cheek and Athelstan nods, helpless. 

At the end of the day they don’t let him back out. Ragnar opens the door for him and Lagertha wraps her arm through his and yeah. Yeah, this is not how he meant to spend Easter.

* * *

(Let's be real: they took him back to the hotel and they fucked him senseless. They took pictures of the way his mouth stretched around Ragnar's cock, and how his dick looked shiny and just sliding into Lagertha. She took pictures of Ragnar spreading Athelstan out, kissing and biting and sucking, rimming him until he was begging. She took pictures of the tears on his face and the way his hands reached, greed. And she told him what to do, and she told Ragnar how to be gentle, and after--when they've all come and the fury of want is lessened--she hooked a leg over Athelstan's thighs, and Ragnar pulled him against his chest, and Athelstan realized he was _never_ leaving, and that he'll never be able to explain this to his mother)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's possible i'll come back to this, I had so much fun with it alsdkfasdf


	7. Fight Your Battles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lagertha and Ragnar get into another fight. This time, it's Athelstan who stops them instead of Bjorn. - anon

He’s quiet about it. The children are just suddenly not in the house, and Athelstan is watching them from the table. His eyebrows are raised but he just looks—like they’re children. Like when he is trying to talk Bjorn out of a fit of teenage fury, his voice patient and his palms up. Ragnar feels the fight seep out of Lagertha when she notices, too. He lets go of her hair and she releases his balls, and they step back.

“You should not fight like that,” Athelstan says. “You love each other too well to be so terrible.”

“You know nothing, Priest,” Ragnar snaps, because it’s been two years, now, but Athelstan is still his, and he will not be—

“We need firewood,” Athelstan tells him, and Lagertha laughs as she picks up her fishing spear, elbowing Ragnar lightly. 

“Yes,” she agrees. “Go chop firewood, husband.” 

“Bringing you to my house was a mistake,” Ragnar mutters at Athelstan, who ignores him serenely.

Fine. Ragnar will just fuck him extra-hard tonight. If he’s not too tired from chopping wood in the middle of summer, two days after a raid.


	8. Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College AU where Althestan is tricked into transferring to University of Minnesota - anon

“Want to keep you,” he said. 

“Uh,” Athelstan said, not sure what to do with what felt like 500 lbs of drunk fratboy snuggling against him, pawing at Athelstan’s dick like he thought that was going to work. “No?”

“Be so good to you,” the guy insisted. 

“You’re going to throw up on me,” Athelstan corrected.

The guy thought about it, and Athelstan tried to shift so that the guy wasn’t all over his dick because he didn’t—well, he did, but he was only here at U of M because he was looking at their library’s rare collection. 

“Get off him,” a girl said abruptly, and shoved at the guy draped over Athelstan viciously. “Fucking shitwad,” she muttered, and then scanned the room. Athelstan stayed very still, because this could go really, really badly? “Ragnar! Rollo is trying to molest a 12-year-old!” 

“Fucking—” another guy said, putting down his solo cup on . “Dude, I am so sorry, he’s not even supposed to be here.” 

“I—” Athelstan started, and the guy—Ragnar—and girl toss Rollo unceremoniously onto the floor, where he snuffles into the carpet. 

“I’m Lagertha,” the girl introduces herself, offering Athelstan a hand up.

“Athelstan,” Athelstan replies, standing. She doesn’t let go of his hand. “I—”

“It’s quieter upstairs,” Ragnar offers. “Come on. You can tell us what kind of name Athelstan is and why we haven’t seen you before.”

Mostly, when they get upstairs, Lagertha pins him to the door and kisses him while Ragnar sits on the bed and watches. Athelstan’s not sure what’s going on, if this is some kind of hazing and they think he’s a pledge (but it’s—not the right time of semester for that). Mostly, there’s a really, really hot girl kissing him and she smiles at him, pulling him to the bed. 

“Uh…” he starts. “I don’t—”

“Relax,” Ragnar suggests, and kisses Athelstan’s neck while Lagertha unbuttons and unzips his jeans. Ragnar is naked, and Athelstan doesn’t know where to put his hands, exactly—what’s the protocol for a threeway? A threeway where—he doesn’t—this kind of thing doesn’t happen. To anyone.

Except, apparently, it happens to Athelstan. And it keeps happening. 

One of them will pull him aside for a blowjob or a quicky, and he hasn’t seen the smelly dorm-room he was in in ages. All of his stuff is in Ragnar’s room at the frat house, except for the stuff that’s in Lagertha’s room (“Because sometimes he’s an idiot, and we can’t kill him, so we need to have a place that’s separate.”). People on campus ask him to pass on messages for him, and somehow he’s now transferring from UVM to U of M and—and he thinks that when Rollo had collapsed on him that terrible, sweaty night, he’d meant his opener as a warning. Maybe the lost pronoun, instead of “I”, was “they.” 

_They want to keep you._


	9. Mirror, Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vikings in space! - littleletknown

In the Viking Empire, there are two positions of power a man can hold: he can be the captain of a starship, or he can be a member of the High Council. If a man is highly ambitious, he reaches for the helm of Emperor, though none have taken that from Ælla in the thirty years since he claimed it. 

Haraldson is captain of ISS _Siggy_. He has been for ten years, when he killed Captain Bjornson to get it. The Empire came to be out of blood, and they are constantly at war, defending their right to exist. There is no kindness here, and children learn young that compassion is never returned, and the only way to advance is to do so by climbing up over the bodies of those who would stand in your way.

Haraldson stays captain by being the sharpest, the cruelest. His people know that he tolerates nothing but loyalty, and what he doesn’t see, his XO, Lagertha, sees. 

Her eyes are sharp as her knives, and lately she’s been watching Lothbrok the younger. 

Commander Lothbrok isn’t someone Haraldson wanted to take on board, but the Council was too interested to hear why Haraldson was so against it. How do you tell a government you’re meant to defend that you have seen your death, and it smiles like a boy whose balls haven’t dropped yet?

You don’t. 

So Haraldson has Lothbrok—both of them, though the older brother, Rollo, is stupider. Hungrier for power and the immediacy of power. A good pilot, loyal enough, and Haraldson loses nothing by allowing Rollo to believe he is worth more alive. 

Ragnar Lothbrok, though. He’s been put in Engineering, though they say his hungers lie towards command. It makes Haraldson’s skin crawl to know he’s so close to the engines—to know that everything they depend on to keep them alive here in the black relies on the continued favor of Ragnar.

The bastard knows it, too. 

Ragnar Lothbrok has the personality of a cult leader. Every planet he’s been to has been altered in some way. He has devotees, people who harbor him when it isn’t in their interests to do so. They hide him, they adore him, they die for him.

Such a man is dangerous: no wonder the Council wanted him aboard the Siggy instead of wandering the galaxy, growing an army.

Still, even the Council shows him favor. Not a month ago the ship found a new planet. It was untouched by the Empire, rich and vast, and it was exactly where Lothbrok said it would be. Exactly where all of the scanners said nothing was. 

In return for his ambition, for being _right,_ the Council allowed Ragnar to take anything he wanted—a single item—from the planet. He chose a local. A young man with wide blue eyes and an absurd mop of brown hair. He looked like a child, and he picked up their language within a week. Ragnar had gone about as though he was cock of the walk, proud of his slave. 

It burned at Haraldson, that he couldn’t touch Ragnar. 

“We will have to act soon,” he says. Lagertha looks up from where she’s idly cleaning her knives. 

“I thought you were going to get the brother to kill him?”

“Have you seen Rollo in two days?” Haraldson asks.

“He was getting handsy with the slave.” 

“Lothbrok killed his own brother,” Haraldson realizes. Fratricide is common: most families only have one child reach maturity. Still, it turns his stomach. It’s a sign. A sign that Lothbrok is tired of playing games. He’s going to make a move for the ship. 

“It’s absurd that he gets a—a bedwarmer,” he mutters, pouring himself a drink. 

“So take the slave,” she says, dismissive. “Or are you not Captain?”

They sit up the night, and at the end he knows he must act. 

He barges into Lothbrok’s quarters. Lothbrok is fucking into his slave, but he has a blaster pointed at Haraldson, the charge whining softly in counterpoint to the slave’s muffled noises. 

Lothbrok doesn’t stop fucking. “You want to do this now?” he asks, as though it’s all an inconvenience. 

Haraldson lifts his chin. “I’m your captain. You have nothing that I cannot take by right.”

Lothbrok stares at him, and then shakes his head. He pulls out of the slave’s body with a slick, obscene sound, and pulls on a pair of pants. The slave glares at Haraldson resentfully, slender body artfully arranged in Lothbrok’s bed. It ought to be Haraldson’s bed. 

“You couldn’t let me finish?” Lothbrok demands. 

“So fuck him again,” Lagertha says, and Haraldson starts to turn, startled. The pain is white hot, the force of the blade entering his body driving the breath from him. 

“You,” he chokes as Lagertha steps over him, into Lothbrok’s quarters. Lothbrok is already back with his slave, quieting him like a lover, which is— 

“I’ll set you down in Northumbria,” Lagertha says. “Floki will meet you there.”

“You’re going to stay with the ship?”

“I like this ship,” she says. “And frankly I don’t want you on it. I’ll fight you a war, Ragnar, but fuck if I’m going to be one of your good little soldiers.”

It’s getting harder to breath. He can’t—

He doesn’t—

“That’s fair,” Lothbrok agrees. “Now leave?”

She does, stepping on Haraldson’s hand as she goes. The pain of it is dull compared to the desperate need to breath as his lungs fill with blood. This is—he coughs, hacking, desperate. In strange counterpoint the slave sighs and moans as the slick sounds of fucking fill the air again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shut up, I put the Vikings in the mirror 'verse. THIS IS A JUDGE-FREE ZONE, GUYS.


	10. Steady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lagertha and Gyda teach Athelstan how to weave. - anon

It’s nice. It’s—quiet. Ragnar and Bjorn teach him to use weapons, but he’s too—it’s not what he was ever meant to do. They grow tired of him quickly, and fight their mock battles, sending him into the house.

“You have clever hands,” Lagertha says. “Come.” 

Gyda is learning to weave, and she and Lagertha fall easily into a rhythm. “Like this,” Lagertha says, guiding Athelstan to her seat and showing him how to wind the threads, how to apply pressure. It’s good work, and doesn’t require so much concentration that he can’t meditate at the same time.

It becomes a time he looks forward to, when he and Gyda work the loom and Lagertha spins, sometimes singing, sometimes telling stories of their people. He wants to write them down, this history, these beliefs that are so different from his. But he listens, and he weaves, and then sews. 

“Like this,” Lagertha says, looking down at the shirt. “You want it to be strong, so if it rips, he can sew it back together, or not worry about it tearing further. It will stand up to the ocean, and blood, and a man.” She looks pleased, satisfied, and he smiles because she’s so much harder to please than Ragnar. Ragnar likes words, stories, someone to meet his eyes when he’s being wicked at his wife’s expense. But Lagertha seems to smile more rarely, stores them up as though she was only given a finite number of them and must be careful. 

“It’s good work,” he says.

“Yes,” she agrees, hands smoothing over the shirt. “It is.”


	11. 10:24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vikings fratboy au! - anon

Athelstan--hates frats. He hates that he's in the house of one, and he hates that Lagertha doesn't care that he hates it, mostly because she joined a sorority and is now ruling it with an iron fist. Not that that's surprising. 

Mostly because she always, always abandons him at these parties and he usually ends up in the kitchen, playing on his phone and hoping the battery lasts to 1:00 so that he can leave. 1:00 is the pre-agreed-upon time for him to be at a party. Right now it's 10:00. So. Three hours. 

It's not that Athelstan doesn't like parties--no, that's a lie. He does. It's a lot of people being really obnoxiously drunk and horny, and it makes his stomach clench a little bit when he thinks about how badly all of this could go. 

The kitchen isn't going to work out as a hiding place. He's in there for a minute when a guy with long dark hair and really painful stubble starts kissing his neck, pulling him in close. Athelstan shoves, hard, and flees upstairs. 

It's too early for anyone to be fucking, and so he picks a random door and leans against it, turning the lock.

"You're in my room why?" a voice says, and a light flips on. Athelstan doesn't scream, but he does freeze in holy terror. 

"I--they're already handsy," he says. 

"You're hiding? Isn't it like--it's too early to be hiding." The guy sounds like he's laughing at him, which: asshole.

"You're hiding," Athelstan points out.

"I was taking a power-nap," the guy says, standing up with yawn. He's--well. He's not wearing anything but a really tiny pair of boxer-briefs, and Athelstan's mouth goes dry because he's--hot. Really, really hot. 

"Sorry--I'll--" he says, a half-beat too late, because as soon as he realized the room was occupied with, apparently the person who lives in the room, he should have left. It's--yeah, no, he's leaving. Fuck the rules, he'll buy Lagertha breakfast for a week. It's 10:24, and Athelstan is done. 

"No, give me a sec," the guy says, pulling on a pair of jeans and rooting around on the floor for a t-shirt. "I'll come down with you." He flashes a grin over his shoulder, all blue eyes and white teeth and no. No. This is--Athelstan _isn't_. He's not--it's not that he's not gay, or straight, he's just not interested. He doesn't have _time_ for fratboys and parties because he's here on scholarship, and it had been made really clear he could _lose_ that if he--isn't devoted. 

So he isn't.

"No, I mean--I should, I only came with my friend, she has this--"

"Ragnar," the guy says, random.

"What?"

"That's my name. Since you weren't going to ask, like, ever." 

He was--he would have. He just--it didn't occur to him. Because he walked into a mostly-naked guy's room and--

"Oh. Sorry, I'm--it's nice to meet you, I'm Athelstan. I'm really sorry about the whole…barging into your room and not leaving thing. I'll just--"

"Just?" Ragnar prompts, his shirt still in his hand. He's tall, Athelstan realizes kind of dumbly. And really--really ripped. 

"Go?" 

"You sure?" Ragnar is grinning, now, leaning in a little, and he has a whole room. A whole room, but here he is, crowding Athelstan against the door. Shirtless.

Fuck it. 

Ragnar's stubble pricks at his chin, at the pads of his thumbs, but his lips are soft and give under Athelstan's mouth, even if he's laughing, a little. 

Athelstan's last kiss was a year ago, another party Lagertha dragged him to their freshman year. There had been spin the bottle involved, and a very drunk sorority pledge, and it had been terrible. 

This--this is not terrible. 

Ragnar's hands are big on Athelstan's hips, his mouth moving easily over Athelstan's. It's not a kiss, it's a battle Athelstan lost before he even initiated it. Ragnar kisses hard and devastatingly, and Athelstan whimpers a little when Ragnar drags his teeth over Athelstan's lower lip. 

Somewhere, in the back of Athelstan's mind, there's a small voice screaming about shame, about how this isn't right, but Athelstan can't think of what it might be. It seems perfectly natural to go to his knees and take Ragnar apart with his mouth.


	12. at the edge of a knife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athelstan gets injured and Ragnar and/or Lagertha patches him back up? - anon

It happens slowly. She can see it before it happens, the way the priest's flesh will split, the way his knees will buckle when the pain hits him. She'll be too slow to get to him, to where he's standing over Bjorn.

Bandits. Ragnar is away, all the men are away, and Haraldson sends his most craven to her home. She runs another through--ten men attacking her house--and smashes the one behind her with her shield. His head makes a satisfying noise when it breaks. 

Bjorn tried, but regardless what his father thinks he's still a boy: he isn't ready to fight, not like this. Not for his life. She doesn't know when he fell, a blow to the head that she hopes sleep will heal, and she doesn't know when Athelstan came out of the house, away from protecting Gyda. 

The brute is mean-looking, vicious and snarling, and his blade is ragged as he swings it down over Athelstan, where he's crouched over Bjorn.

Someone screams, perhaps her, in her fury, Lagertha doesn't know. She reaches them, and though she hasn't the strength to cut his head clean off, it hangs awkwardly, fastened by his spine. 

Bjorn is rousing, confused to find blood. "You're bleeding!" he tells Athelstan, already pushing away the robe, his fingers careless in his fear. 

"Stop," she says. "Gyda!"

Gyda comes out, her eyes surveying the carnage before focusing on them both. She will be a strong shieldmaiden, Lagertha thinks with pride. 

"Water. Bjorn, go put your father's knife in the fire."

"Does it--?" he starts, his mind clearly on her needle, but the priest is already too pale, and the dirt around them is too slick. 

"Go!" she snarls, and he flees. "You will stay with me," she tells Athelstan, catching him when he falters. She pulls him against her, and his fingers flex on her breast. If it were any other time she'd be laughing about his discomfort, but now. She pulls back to look him in the eye, and he blinks, sluggish. 

"This really hurts," he tells her, and she nods. 

"It will be worse before it is better."

"With you it usually is," he sighs, and then winces. Bjorn comes out with the blade of the knife a dull orange, and Gyda is back with a pail of water. She leans in, presses her lips to his. 

"You are going to live, because I say you will," she tells him. He looks at her, and he's trembling, whether due to the fear of pain or because he's gone into shock. She holds his eyes. "You are going to live," she repeats, and he nods, jerkily.

She takes the knife from Bjorn, and Bjorn lifts Athelstan's shirt. It's deep, but clean, still. 

The Æsir themselves could hear him scream, and Bjorn and Gyda hold him firmly while he thrashes before falling to unconsciousness. Lagertha lifts him, grunting and trying not to shift him. There's lanolin to put on the wound and Gyda presses ripped shreds of the priest robes to it, and she puts him into her bed. It's a long night, watching for fever, for the vibrant red to turn into something more sinister, for swelling in the area to start. His dreams are wretched, but he survives the night, and when it is time to wake both children peer in, relief on their faces when they catch the rise and fall of his chest.

She feeds her children, fishes, drills them both. There is weaving to do, bodies to burn downwind, but she finds herself drifting back to the house too often, watching like a frightened babe for the rise and fall of his chest. 

"Sleep is the best for him," she tells Gyda, who gives her a dubious look. 

"I will sacrifice to Odin," Gyda informs her, as though to imply Lagertha's healing capabilities will be insufficient. It's a terrible thing, that her daughter takes after her husband. 

On the third day, he rouses, but cannot stand long. He's worse than a small child, shifting and getting up even when she's told him not to move. She should be glad, she supposes, that he is here to move at all, but mostly she wants to wring his neck. 

On the fifth day, Ragnar comes home and starts shouting, seeing the shallow grave and the small armory against the side of the house.

"Shut up!" she snarls as Athelstan shifts against her, restless. 

"He's _sleeping_ ," Gyda agrees, narrowing her eyes at her father from the loom. Bjorn sighs, scaling fish. 

Ragnar walks over to her, and gently pulls down the fur coverings. He's healing well, but it still looks ugly. 

"What happened?" he asks, and she wants to say, _Your ambitions will get us killed to a one._

"He saved Bjorn," she says instead, and Ragnar's face twists, something complicated and terrible, and she ignores him, instead shifting Athelstan a little. He sleeps better beside her, she's found. "If you ruin this for me," she warns, and Ragnar makes a face before walking to help Bjorn with the fish. 

She laughs into Athelstan's hair, kissing it fondly. "He's jealous," she murmurs. "Shall I share?"

He doesn't respond except to huff and shift in his sleep, but she thinks not. Not yet, anyway.


	13. touched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athelsten is an emp/telepath/pmetry/clairvoyent/whatever, sent to be a monk because that's what people do w/'touched' children (structured environment, fewer different thoughts, prayer works as meditation, easier to keep a handle on your mind so it doens't overload/go-crazy), + religious touched-by-god-cultural-stuff. Vikings don't recognise that he's like this 'coz their pyschs present v. differently (eg. Floki, diff. kind of 'touched by gods'). -anon

The priest shakes and shivers, harder than the others, though they're all equally wet, dressed the same. There is something…frantic about his eyes. About the way the others look at him, beseeching. Their words have the cadence of prayer, but Ragnar does not think that's what it is. Or at least, he does not think that they pray to their god. 

Suddenly, five collapse overboard. The men give shouts, reaching their fingers into the waves to try to pull them back, but they sink. 

The young priest is still shaking, and blood is trickling from his nose, though he's quick to wipe it on his sleeve. 

"They must be diseased!" Rollo shouts, wading through and feeling for pulses. He'll find none, Ragnar can tell. The young priest's eyes roll back in his head, and Ragnar shoves himself up, shoving his fingers under the man's jaw. He finds the heartbeat easily. 

"Not diseased," Ragnar says. "They lost the will to live." 

Or someone took it from them. He hauls the priest's limp body up to the stern with him, and Floki crouches over him, his eyes flickering green, fingers tinged with it as he presses at the priest's body.

"Well?" Ragnar demands, low. 

"He will not make you a boat," Floki says. "But he may make you a blade." 

"But he is like you."

"Ehhh," Floki says, weaving his hand through the air. "In a manner of speaking. But no, I do not think that these people treat the Gods-touched well." 

"What can he do?"

"That, perhaps, Siggy could see," Floki says. "I see truth only in trees and things which grow from the ground. People are disgusting." 

The others seem to have forgotten the priest exists at all. When he regains consciousness he keeps himself small, ducking his head beneath his hood as though it will hide the glowing blue of his eyes. 

_I see you_ , Ragnar thinks at him as they sight the shore. _And I promise you, no harm will befall you._

The priest's head lifts and he stares at Ragnar, something like the saddest of contempt on his face. He is far too young to look so haunted. 

_Do not promise what you cannot deliver,_ the priest thinks back.

"What is your name?" Ragnar asks him as they climb off the boat, home, finally.

"They will arrest you and keep everything," the priest replies, and Ragnar is confused until he looks at the landing and sees Haraldson's men waiting. 

"If you keep me alive, Priest," Ragnar says, low, leaning in to catch his eyes so that he will see that Ragnar is telling him the truth, "I will keep you alive. Or could you not do to me what you did to the other priests?" 

There is a low pause, and though the men move around them, laughing and excited to be home, victorious, it is very still right here, in this space that they share. The priest meets his eyes, and they are still glowing, but Ragnar isn't afraid. Ragnar is this man's best bet to survive, and he is not stupid. 

"Athelstan," he says, finally.

"Come then," Ragnar says, gripping his shoulder and grinning. "Let us tempt fate, Athelstan."


	14. The Going Rate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bachelor auction AU, someone wins someone - anon

"I could be auctioned," Ragnar says. Lagertha raises her eyebrow at him.

"Yes," she agrees. "But we can afford to bid, and it's for a good cause, so shut up." 

He makes a face at her, but sits down. They're raising money for the hospital, and have bullied doctors into putting themselves up for auction. Well, Siggy has, because she's terrifyingly competent as the hospital administrator. And her husband is the Chief of Surgery. 

"I would raise a lot of money," he mutters. He would; he's the head of trauma and he's hot.

"They're all afraid of you," she says, smug in the knowledge that it's true, and that he can't argue. He should never have married one of the best psychiatrists in the state. It was inevitably going to be bad for him.

Still, he puts on his ridiculous suit and trims his beard and sits with Rollo and Torstein.

"I am going to get drunk."

"Not bidding?" Toristien asks, laughing.

Floki throws himself into Ragnar's lap. "You're not bidding?" he demans. "HOw could you not bid?"

"I'm bidding," Ragnar says, sighing as Floki nuzzles him happily. Neurosurgeons are fucking weird, everyone knows this. "I just have to be drunk first."

The first few are younger doctors, all clearly intimidated by Siggy. Floki bids on one, a pretty younger girl who wears about as much eyeliner as he does, and when he wins she jumps on him and they head for one of the on-call rooms, because Floki is nothing if not classy. 

"This is hell," he says to Rollo, who toasts him.

"The next bachelor is Athelstan Priestly, a resident in our pediatric ward. He is 26, 5'9 and, I'm sure, loves long walks on the beach." 

Athelstan Priestly glances at Siggy a little incredulously, but she just smiles blandly.

"I'll start the bidding at $500," Siggy says. 

"$600," Rollo says immediately. Ragnar starts thinking about how much he can pay off-hand tonight. There's something--something about him. Something Ragnar wants to wreck, or at least taste. 

"$700," Lagertha calls out, and Ragnar looks at her with narrowed eyes. She smirks at him.

"$1000," Ragnar says, and Athelstan looks at him in horror. 

"Do they have to put out if you bid more than a thousand dollars on them?" Floki wonders out loud, coming back to the table. His fly is wet, and he stinks of sex. 

Athelstan looks like he's going to be sick, like he's goign to turn and run.

"$1200," Lagertha says. 

"You are both crazy," Rollo mutters into his beer, and Ragnar laughs at him. 

"$5000," he says, and Lagertha bursts out into peals of laughter. Siggy stares at Ragnar, who grins, getting up and offering Athelstan a hand. 

"Come on," he says. "No one is going to outbid me."

"The dates--start later? I mean--you--we. You're supposed to do this on a different day." He doesn't seem to have noticed he's put his hand in Ragnar's.

"Is that in the rule book?" Ragnar asks him, grinning. He likes him.

"You know there's a rule book?" Athelstan asks, mock-surprised, and Ragnar tugs him down from the catwalk, leaning in closely. He likes him even better--a bit of fire well-hidden. 

"How else would I know how not to behave?" he asks, brushing his lips against Athelstan's. Athelstan leans in, chasing his lips, and Ragnar thinks how easy it will be to press bruises into his skin, to have him open and shaking in his bed. How he'll beg so prettily, his eyes going wide.

"Oh for God's sake," Lagertha laughs at him, shoving at them. "Come on, I called a cab."

"You--" Athelstan starts, pulling back. "You're married."

"Yes," she agrees, wrapping her arm around Athelstan's waist. "And I matched his bid, since it seems only fair." 

Ragnar looks at her, and she smirks back at him. 

"You donated $10,000 to date me for a night," Athelstan says slowly.

"Yes," she agrees. "Well. To fuck you for a night." 

"That's--I'm not a--a prostitute," he hisses, pulling away from them both. Lagertha rolls her eyes and says,

"I'll get a cab."

"You don't have to," Ragnar says, watching her go. Her dress clings to her every curve, suggests all the ways he could take it off and fuck her, or maybe leave it on and fuck her. Athelstan is watching her walk away too. "We'll take you to dinner, and you can go home and think about how we're probably fucking, thinking of you. Because we will be. You can leave us and we'll spend the night thinking about how it might have been."

"Oh God," Athelstan chokes out, and Ragnar cups his jaw softly, leaning in. When he makes contact, Athelstan makes a sound like a starving man, and Ragnar wonders how long it's been. He remembers being a resident--they were married and they still never found enough time to fuck. 

"Come home with us," Ragnar says, pulling back. Athelstan blinks up at him, dazed, cheeks flushed. 

"Okay," he says.


	15. a fine wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The preview for the next ep made me nervous about Vikings following the sagas (for once) and having Ragnar divorce Lagertha for a shieldmaiden-princess named either Thora or Aslaug. so... could you write something where some king is like "marry my daughter. she is badass" and Ragnar being all "No thanks, I have a badass wife at home (and a priest)"? - survivably so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this jumped the queue because it is actually kind of episode-relevant and will be jossed by 1.06)

They are here because Rollo knows the Earl's oldest son. Ragnar is here because apparently he is never going to get home. He is going to get there and Bjorn will be a blooded warrior, Gyda will have a husband, and his wife will have stolen any affection his priest had for him. 

He is going to be old, and ugly, and his dick won't work. He's already been stuck here too long, fighting with the Earl's warriors, testing skills. 

His men were getting restless, but when the Earl told them he was going to hold a feast, Ragnar had thought it was a sign: they were going home soon.

And then the Earl's wife and daughter had been there. His only daughter. Who Ragnar was, apparently, sitting next to.

This is not good, and Ragnar doesn't need Torstein's frantic eyebrows to tell him that.

"Do you not think she's beautiful?" Earl Ahlquist asks, gesturing to his daughter.

She is, in fact, very beautiful. Her hair is a pale, pale blonde, the way Gyda and Bjorn's was when they were small, and her dark eyes are large, the shape of her face sweet. She's also very, very young.

"Will she not make a lovely wife?" the Earl persists. Rollo is glaring at Ragnar, who doesn't see how this is his fault. 

"Wife?" Floki giggles into his hand, and Torstein shoves him into his soup and then clears his throat mildly. Floki just giggles into his soup. It's a terrible sound. 

"Her husband will be a lucky man," Ragnar agrees carefully. She flushes--how young _is_ she? He can't remember Lagertha ever flushing.

Earl Ahlquist smiles at him benevolently. "She will give him fine sons. I would see her with a man proven in battle. A man of honor."

"I hope the same for my daughter," Ragnar tells him. 

The Earl's daughter says, "You have a daughter?" 

"I do," he says. "Gyda. She is eleven this winter. My son, Bjorn, is near-fourteen."

"Gyda looks just like her mother," Rollo says, and Ragnar takes back his unkind thoughts. 

"You have a wife."

"And a priest," Floki volunteers, and this time it's Ragnar who kicks him.

"What's--"

"He was a slave," Rollo explains, and Odin save him from his helpful friends. "But then he was not. He stays with them. Do you think your wife will have stolen him from you?"

"You keep a bedslave?" the Earl asks, clearly rethinking his offer. Ragnar wants to know why the mention of Athelstan is the thing that is making him reconsider, and not the mention of Lagertha and his children. 

"It is useful to have him. He watches the children when we go West."

"Your wife goes west?" the daughter asks, her eyes lighting up, and Ragnar, who is not a fool, tells her the stories of his wife in battle. 

All of his men have stories of his wife, of how she saved them, stood her ground as well as any man, how the strange men in the West don't know how to fight a woman. Floki tells the story of Ragnar and the bear--the less flattering one; Lagertha's version. 

When the dawn breaks and the feast ends, the Earl sends them on their way, well-stocked and well-fed. 

"I wonder what the fair Lagertha will think of this," Floki muses. "When we tell her that Ragnar was engaged this night." 

Ragnar truly has the worst friends.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bjorn's POV: he starts to consider Athelstan as part of his family - anon

It happened, he thinks, when the priest jumps into the water and rises from the dark with his father in his arms. 

Until that moment, he’d been—well, he didn’t pull his weight, did he? He wasn’t a man, and he wasn’t a woman, and he wasn’t a slave and yet his father placed him—a foreigner, a priest, a slave—above Bjorn. 

He undermined their gods and their ways and he wasn’t of them. He would never understand, Bjorn had been so sure of it.

And then he had hurled himself into the water, and while Bjorn had panicked, Athelstan had held Father close, shivering but not letting go until Mother made him, began to bandage the wounds. The priest had taken up the oars and taken them to Floki. 

He had been afraid for Father, and Bjorn hadn’t understood his prayers, but he’d recognized a man who was demanding something of his God. He had seen that look in his father’s eyes often enough.

He watches them, now—Athelstan and his father. His father is short tempered, spiteful and betrayed by his body’s frailty, but Athelstan ignores that as easily as he had ignored Bjorn’s ill temper. He sits and sings, a little, ducking his head and laughing at something Father says. Father smiles, something soft around his eyes, and Bjorn thinks that it’s good the priest is with them. Good that they’re family.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Blanket Permission:** go ahead and translate, make podfic, rework the fic, or do whatever other transformative work you can think of. If the work is hosted on another site, drop me a comment or email and I'll put a link in the story notes!
> 
> [twitter:](https://twitter.com/waldorph) for unfiltered me || [tumblr:](http://waldorph.tumblr.com/) less about me, more about the pretty gifsets and art

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Nothing Will Keep Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/775664) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)
  * [[Podfic] No Plan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/775670) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)
  * [[Podfic] the edge of a knife](https://archiveofourown.org/works/775675) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)
  * [[Podfic] The Going Rate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/775679) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)
  * [[Podfic] Touched](https://archiveofourown.org/works/775682) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




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